


Scriptures

by whatthedruidscallme



Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-21
Updated: 2018-12-21
Packaged: 2019-09-23 22:23:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 573
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17088848
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whatthedruidscallme/pseuds/whatthedruidscallme
Summary: Fingertips.Strands of hair.The flush of a cheek, the shine of an eye.Leta Lestrange knows she is only moments from death, but somehow all she can think about are the breaths of an old life that seem to belong to someone else entirely.Tiny notes almost too minuscule to remember, not a chapter, not a book, but scriptures only. Endlessly small, endlessly miraculous.





	Scriptures

She'd forgotten what he looked like.

Not the colour of his eyes or his height or the shape of his hair, but all the details that drew him into reality and out of her mind, all the tiny scriptures that made him who he was.  
The whimsical twist of his mouth. The way he stood with his head tilted sideways, as though she were a puzzle he couldn't quite solve and liked it better that way. The way his gaze flickered towards her and behind her, like he wanted to look away but couldn't manage it.

_He's taller now_ , she realized with a pang. Perhaps she had forgotten more than she'd realized.  
She remembered a child only a couple of inches taller than her, with bright eyes that drank in everything they saw. A slight boy who held himself differently and could make friends with anything except a human being or a desk job. Someone who had helped her carve their initials into an old wooden desk, a rare smile twitching at the corner of his mouth, and had hastily swept away the wood shavings as the professor walked by.

Now there was a man standing in front of her, with the same cinnamon coloured hair as he had always had but darker eyes, eyes that held worry and rejection and pain and grief, and it was with great reluctance she realized this was the same open, strange boy who had first held out a hand to her. Who had shown her that she was not the only one bereft of the skill of belonging, that she was simply part of a different puzzle, and this terrible feeling of wrongness that had turned her stomach from the moment she'd stepped into the castle was not only hers. It was never just hers.  
Unbidden, it was Dumbledore who had said not to let regret become her companion and she couldn't stand it anymore, this was the boy with the peculiar draw to anything with curious eyes and a beating heart, who fell in love with anything that was broken or didn't belong not because it didn't belong, but perhaps because he thought he could knit them back together. That if he had enough time any puzzle could be solved.

  
_Regret is my constant companion...don't let it become yours_.

Leta's heart was beating a violent tattoo against her ribcage and she was aware of the taste of every breath, every minuscule movement of her eyes, the awful clarity in her mind, the twitch of her fingers and the sound of blood pulsing through her veins, how had she never realized what a marvel she was?

Her hand gripped her wand so that she feared the skin over her knuckles would split. Every cell in her body was screaming at her to step back. Her fingertips were cold, as though the blood had already retreated from them.  
But there something else besides blood pounding through her veins now, something like elation flooding her body and a terribly harsh happiness sang in her mind.  
_At last_ , it seemed to sigh. _At last, you are free._

_Free._

Like a pale sheet, sinking into the restless seas.

"I love you," Leta said.  
Newt and Theseus stared at her as she turned away from them, and as the fire flared blue in front of her, she realized she could no longer quite recall the colour of Newt Scamander's eyes.


End file.
